245 Digital Aids to Design Creativity - Volume 2 - eCAADe 30 | INTRODUCTION The word “compromising” is deined by the diction- ary as “a settlement of diferences by mutual con- cessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conlicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modiication of demands.”[1] During the design process, designers need to achieve compro- mise between conlicting characteristics of a build- ing or an object: cross-ventilation against protec- tion, transparency against insulation, economy of materials against strength, form against constructa- bility, and so on. Kolarevic (2009) calls “integrative design” the cooperation between diferent disciplines “from the earliest stages of design, luidly crossing the conven- tional disciplinary and professional boundaries to deliver an innovative product at the end” (p.337). He also points out the possibility of integrating “almost instantaneously produced” physical models into this process, as “a valuable feedback mechanism be- tween conception and production” (p.338). Similarly, in her seminal paper Theory and design in the first digital age, Oxman (2006) points out the importance of interacting digital and physical models during the design process in diferent categories of digital ex- pertise. This paper describes an integrative design ex- periment in which diferent types of virtual and physical models were used in order to achieve a design that compromises aesthetics, lightness, fab- rication, assembly and structural performance. It is part of a trilogy of conference papers in which three aspects of the design and fabrication process of the same object are described. The irst aspect is the parametric design thinking process used to achieve Samba Reception Desk Compromising aesthetics, fabrication and structural performance in the design process Wilson Barbosa 1 , André Araujo 2 , Guilherme Carvalho 3 , Gabriela Celani 4 State University of Campinas, Brazil 4 www.fec.unicamp.br/~celani 1 wbarbosa@fec.unicamp.br, 2 a.araujo@fec.unicamp.br, 3 giantinigui@gmail.com, 4 cela- ni@fec.unicamp.br Abstract. The present paper describes an integrative design experiment in which different types of models were used in order to achieve a design that compromises aesthetics, lightness, fabrication, assembly and structural performance. It shows how an integrative approach, through the use of both virtual and physical models, can provide valuable feedback in different phases of the design and fabrication process. It was possible to conclude that the design method used allowed solving many problems and had a signiicant impact in the resulting object. Keywords. Design process; structural analysis; parametric design; digital fabrication; integrative design; models in design.